DNA can store your data

Updated
January 24, 2013 10:42:00

Scientists have worked out a way to store vast amounts of information on DNA. As the repository of genetic information in all known organisms, DNA has a pretty good track record for storing vital information for long periods of time. Researchers stored and retrieved text, a photo and an audio file.

TONY EASTLEY: Vast amounts of computer generated information requires a huge amount of storage. Scientists have now worked out a way to store massive amounts of information on DNA.

As the building block and storage device of life itself DNA has a good track record for storing vital information for long periods of time.

To prove it's a viable storage facility researchers stored and retrieved text, a photo, even an audio file - all off DNA.

Will Ockenden reports.

WILL OCKENDEN: As more and more of daily life goes digital, finding a place to store the ever growing mountain of virtual information is getting trickier.

Seventy-two hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day and companies like Google currently store the data on servers in massive data centres.

Scientists think they've found a better way.

NICK GOLDMAN: DNA, which is well known for being the stuff that the human genome in every living organism's genome is made of, can also be used not in a living form but in an inert form to store really quite large quantities of digital information.

WILL OCKENDEN: Dr Nick Goldman is a research scientist with the European Bioinformatics Institute in the UK and was the lead author of the study published today in the Journal Nature.

NICK GOLDMAN: The problem with the old school hard drive, it breaks down after a few years. How long do you trust your hard drive to work? If you're trying to store something long term on a hard drive it's not going to work whereas with DNA once you've written it once it's really stable and you can just put it somewhere fairly safe and it's going to be good for thousands of years.

WILL OCKENDEN: DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule found in living cells and is like a blueprint for an organism.

If printed, the information that makes up one human would take up 200 phonebooks or require about three gigabytes of computer storage.

NICK GOLDMAN: Current estimates are that there's three zettabytes of information stored digitally on Earth. And zettabytes are so big that we don't even really know what they are, you know, they're unthinkably big.

The method we use could scale up that big. It's just at the moment that would be unthinkably expensive.

WILL OCKENDEN: DNA storage is still in its infancy and is very expensive. At today's DNA storage rates a one minute high-definition cat video found on YouTube would cost about half a million dollars to store.

It's also not the fastest technology.

NICK GOLDMAN: Oh, one megabyte in the writing stage took two days, in the reading stage it took two weeks.

WILL OCKENDEN: If there's been one constant in the ever changing digital world, it's been technology always gets cheaper, faster and more available.

The researchers say if current trends in technological advances continue, DNA storage could be cost-effective within a decade.